


Damn them to hell and me with them.

by finefeatheredfriend



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Feelings, Sad, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23366713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finefeatheredfriend/pseuds/finefeatheredfriend
Summary: When Arthur finds his old journal from before Blackwater on display in an art gallery, he realizes he would rather destroy it than let someone else take credit for his memories.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Isaac Morgan, Eliza/Arthur Morgan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	Damn them to hell and me with them.

**Author's Note:**

> So. I had some artwork stolen. I channeled my rage into this story. Apologies if any of it seems out of character for Arthur.

“Shock” was not a strong enough word to express how Arthur felt when he walked into the art gallery and beheld his own work on the walls. Horror. Rage. Fury. Now, _those_ were words more befitting his emotions, but still…not strong enough. His hands were shaking at his sides and he felt the blood drain from his face. He felt a little nauseated and was glad he had only had a cup of coffee to drink so far, or he might have retched up his breakfast right there on the floor.

It started simple. Small. The pages were framed nicely, hung beneath hot electric lights that gave them an almost ethereal appearance.

“Work by Miller T. Stone,” a sign declared and rage solidified to outright want for murder. Whoever Miller T. Stone was, he certainly had not drawn all these sketches. Arthur had. It was the work of decades, sketches and notes from nearly twenty-five years of living, stolen and put forth for all to see. Arthur took a slow, deep breath. Surely there must be some mistake. He leaned closer, inspecting the art closely. No. No, those were surely his lines, his work, his hand.

A sparrow, midway through its song, jotted down in dull lead pencil.

“Saw this little fella today singing his heart out. Reckon he was happier than I ever been in my life. Must be nice being birdbrained and ignorant of the evils of the world.” Arthur swallowed hard. That had been drawn a few months after he had watched his father hanged.

A page full of deeply detailed herbs, all with labels.

A sketch of a young mare – Bodicea in her prime. “Hosea and Dutch bought me this pretty gal today. She’s a wild one, and a bit narrow in the chest, but she’ll do just fine. She’s got fire in her and I know for a surety that she’ll work hard for me if I ask her nice. Certainly does seem to like peppermints.”

Arthur paced slowly through the gallery, a hard knot in his throat, keeping him from being able to swallow, nearly keeping him from being able to breathe. His jaw was clenched so tightly he could feel the vein in his temple pounding, could feel his teeth creaking beneath the strain, but still he clenched it. He clenched it so he wouldn’t scream, so he wouldn’t lose what little control he had as he stared at his own work, his own private creations plastered on the wall. It wasn’t even that they were in public view.

In another life, Arthur thought, in one of those ideal worlds Dutch always talked about, he might have fancied himself an artist. No, it wasn’t that his work had an audience. It was that it had been _stolen._ Taken from him, with no regard to the time and attention to detail it had taken, with no thought to how it might make the real creator feel, seeing someone else take credit for deeply intimate work. He felt distinctly violated, in a way he could not put into words as he stood there, looking at things he _had_ put into words. Personal thoughts. Notes. Sketches. All making the false artist twenty-five cents a visitor.

Arthur took another trudging step forward. It wasn’t about the money. It was something deeper, some personal sense of assault that made him want to rip this “Miller T. Stone” limb from limb. He stared at his work.

Another page of herbs, annotated.

A prospector, missing several teeth and proudly holding a lump of gold that Arthur had later stolen.

“Feller found quite a hunk of gold. He was real pleased with himself. All the way until I stole it off him anyway,” the original page had said, but that part had been folded back out of audience view. Apparently Stone didn’t want to be known as an outlaw.

But he was, apparently, just fine being a suitor, a lover. Arthur stared at the next page on the wall and unbidden tears welled in his eyes. Even before he had lost his original journal in Blackwater, he hadn’t flipped to this page in years. It hurt too much to see this face staring back at him, but here it was, staring.

The drawing was of a beautiful woman, looking at the viewer coyly.

“Miss Eliza Washington. Waitress at Dutch’s new favorite restaurant. Sure does have some real pretty eyes, but she’s surely too good for a ugly fella like me.”

Another drawing, this one a self-portrait of Arthur and Eliza using his hat to cover their kiss from the viewer.

“Softest lips I ever had the pleasure of kissing. She tastes like honey and her skin is like silk. Why she fancies me, I’ll never know.”

Arthur paced the small hallway that held several more of his drawings, pauses, gaps in his and Eliza’s story. Drawings of churches, lizards, trees. Then, another drawing of Eliza, this time with a rounded lower belly, unmistakably pregnant.

“Well. I mighta known better. Shoulda known better. But I didn’t, and that’s that. Apparently I got that pretty waitress with child, bastard that I am. Kid deserves better than me as a father, but I’ll do right by them, one way or another.”

More sketches of animals, a couple of Hosea, one of Dutch. Arthur’s heart skipped a beat, but he hadn’t labelled these sketches, thank Christ. That journal of his, it was a dangerous thing. Crimes listed out on paper for anyone to use as testimony against them, he realized, whether the audience could see them or not. His blood boiled. As if this violation of his property wasn’t enough.

Arthur’s heart nearly stopped as he paused on the latest page framed within plain wood, hanging there like a bullet wound. His heart didn’t stop, no, but it broke all over again.

“Isaac Morgan,” the page said simply. Arthur had given the boy his surname, despite his bastardous origin. There he was, looking back at Arthur with his mother’s eyes and his father’s nose, an inquisitive expression on his face. Arthur swallowed hard and looked to the next. The silhouette of a man and a boy fishing.

“Took Isaac out to learn how to fish today. Little fella caught a five pound perch on his second cast. He’s a natural, which makes him a damn sight better at fishing than me.”

Two crosses, softly shaded.

“Came home to bring money to Eliza and a toy for Isaac. Found these instead.” The paper was wrinkled in places, round splotches of lighter color in some spots, distorting the drawing.

The next page had a smear the shape of his thumbprint in blackish-red.

“Took care of them fellers that killed my boy and my woman. Killing them bastards didn’t bring my family back. Killing them didn’t make me feel better either. Damn them to hell and me with them.”

Arthur didn’t walk through the rest of the gallery, he just stood there, frozen in place, his head feeling light, his chest feeling thick, making it hard to breathe. He stared and stared and stared, his eyes moving just enough to take in Isaac’s face, Eliza’s face, their graves, the bloody thumbprint and “Damn them to hell and me with them.”

Fists clenched so tightly he felt his nails chewing into his palm, Arthur’s shoulders leapt and an odd noise bubbled up out of him.

A sob.

“Sir, are you quite well?” With an effort, Arthur tore his gaze from the pages of his journal on the wall. He realized belatedly that tears were gathered in his eyes, so he blinked them away.

“Reckon I’d like to speak with the artist, if possible,” he said in a strangled voice. The man who had spoken, obviously a gallery attendant, took in Arthur’s filthy clothing, his sidearm, the redness of his face and the wetness of his eyes and took a large step back.

“I’m afraid he’s not in,” the smaller man said, swallowing with a click, no doubt nervous about this lumbering brute’s behavior.

All of Arthur’s self-control was gone as quickly and as simply as cutting a thread. The man found himself pressed up against the wall, sliding the framed drawings akilter as he wheezed in a breath past Arthur’s vice grip on his neck. Arthur’s lips curled and he put his face right in the little man’s own, so close he could smell what the attendant had eaten for lunch.

“I said ‘I’d like to speak with the artist,’” Arthur repeated, his widened, sharpened eyes leaving no doubt in the man’s mind that resistance would be met with unimaginable force.

“Yes, sir, immediately,” the man choked out, his eyes watering. Arthur set him down, straightening his shirt collar in a way that suggested he would rather have used the material to strangle him. The attendant led the way up a set of stairs, past a locked door and to the glass-windowed door of a small study. He knocked timidly, but Arthur just shoved him out of the way and kicked the door open, shattering several of the panes with the force of his blow.

“Git,” Arthur ordered the attendant, and the man vanished with an urgency of obedience.

“Who the hell are you?!” demanded the balding man at the desk, standing and scrabbling for a sharp letter opener in his desk drawer.

“It turns out,” Arthur spat, “That apparently my name is Miller T. Stone.” His cold blue eyes stared into the man’s watery hazel ones until the man’s shoulders slumped. He dropped the letter opener, no doubt sensing the futility of such a weapon against Arthur’s wrath.

“Er, I, uh, I didn’t realize…”

“You didn’t realize. You didn’t _realize?!_ Do you have any idea what those pages mean to me?! What the journal means to me?! Take ‘em down, right now!”

“I can’t, it’s my livelihood.” Arthur slammed him to the ground, clocking him a solid right hook to the jaw.

“It’s my goddamn livelihood, you piece of shit! It’s my art! My work! My life!” Arthur picked him up by the lapels, ramming his back into the wall, rattling loose a plethora of small statues, awards and other clutter. “You’re comin’ with me,” Arthur declared, and with a mighty grunt he literally threw Stone down the stairs. The man bumped and slammed and rolled his way to the bottom, unable to recover before Arthur picked him back up and threw him into the gallery. A woman shrieked. “Get outta here!” Arthur demanded, and the three current guests of the gallery fled, wide-eyed.

“How dare you!” Stone demanded, now somewhat recovered from his mistreatment, though he was cradling his wrist, which was very likely broken.

“You’re gonna take this down, right now,” Arthur informed him. Stone set his jaw.

“No.”

Well. The man did have stones, Arthur would give him that. He wondered with a small inane streak of humor if that was a fake name or if he had chosen it himself.

“How do you put your pants on?” Arthur ground out.

“What?” Stone asked dumbly.

“Over them big balls of yours?” Arthur finished, but there was no humor in his tone. He slammed a knee into Stone’s groin, buckling the man to the floor where he wheezed and moaned, grasping himself. “You don’t know me, and you don’t know what you done to me, but you _will_ give me the money I’m owed for you usin’ my work, and you will take it down, you understand me, Mr. Stone?” Arthur rifled through his pockets and extracted his money clip as Stone protested feebly.

“Mister, I can’t do that, that gallery has kept me in business for the past six months! It’s been on display in five galleries! It’s wonderful work! Look, I can cut you a deal for providing the art sure, but…” He didn’t get a chance to finish as Arthur cut his knuckles on the man’s teeth. Stone grasped at both his mouth and his groin now and Arthur wondered absently which he would uncover when he hit him again. He slammed the heel of his foot into Stone’s belly and like clockwork, Stone slid his hand from his mouth to his abdomen, so Arthur hit him again in the mouth, this time with an open palm, leaving a stinging red print that raised into a welt almost instantly.

“I ain’t askin’,” Arthur informed him. With that, he pulled out his match book and a bottle of vodka from his satchel. He doused the floor and added a wadded newspaper before flicking the match.

“No!” Stone screamed, scrambling to his feet, “you can’t!”

“There’s plenty of things I can’t do, mister. This ain’t one of them.”

“You’d rather see your work destroyed than let another man profit on them? You’re really so petty, so callow as to destroy art for the sake of your feelings?” Stone demanded incredulously, a mocking edge to his tone.

“You’re goddamn right,” Arthur nodded. He looked around the room. It was an old building, likely put up at the end of the last century. “This wood,” Arthur advised, “it’s old. Dry. Covered in varnish. Them curtains is silk. And this?” He pointed to the pages of his journal, “Well it’s real cheap paper. When I drop this match, this place’ll go up like kindling and there won’t be no stoppin’ the flames that are gonna take all of this away from both of us.”

“But you can’t…”

“I can and I will!” Arthur hollered, cursing when the lit match in his hand petered out after burning the tip of his finger. He struck another with no hesitation. “Only question is whether or not you’ll burn with it.” Stone stared at him, momentarily unsure. Then, the blood drained from his face. He saw now in Arthur’s eyes not just the flame of the match, but the very flames of hell. Without another word, he fled, scrambling on the slick floor in his haste to escape.

Twenty-five years of work. Twenty-five years of memories, and thoughts. All taken from him. Exploited by a thief. Arthur gave a humorless chuckle, remembering dozens of robberies, countless hold ups and break ins. If anyone was damned, it was surely him. He’d robbed his way across half the country and yet somehow this crime seemed worse than his own. He shook his head at himself, glancing at the dwindling match still jutting from his fingers, licking eagerly at the stale air of the gallery. If he was damned, he might as well send his journal to hell to meet him when he got there.

Arthur took one last long look at Eliza’s face, and then Isaac’s, touching each with his free hand.

With that, he stepped to the door, and dropped the match.


End file.
